Introduction

We return to the beginning of Sam Bankman-Fried’s lucrative foray into crypto and ask: how did it all fall apart? Sam Bankman-Fried rose to the top of the crypto world with help from his friends. Gary Wang was a former fellow math-camper and brilliant programmer; Caroline Ellison was a former colleague at an elite Wall Street firm and an avid LARPer on the side. While still in their twenties, they were entrusted with billions of dollars of customer and investor funds. But in retrospect there were signs that maybe their enormous fortunes weren't created simply through their supposed technological and financial genius. For transcripts of this series, please visit here.